Biography 
Showing 1 - 20 of 22
There are a total of 98 valid entries on the list.
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"A soul-stirring memoir from seasoned travel journalist Nikki Vargas, whisking us through the countries that brought her new love, self-discovery, and inspiration to launch the first feminist travel publication Unearth Women"--
2. Celia Cruz
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"Meet the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz-once just a girl from Havana, Cuba, who loved to sing. Her soulful voice, compelling charm, and unstoppable determination led to her meteoric rise to fame, opening the door for Latinx performers everywhere. Her booming career took her from the Sonora Matancera to the Fania All-Stars, with the rising popularity of salsa, a genre born of Afro-Cuban musical stylings. Six decades and more than seventy albums later,...
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"A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society, in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them, from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity"--
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Average Rating:
4 stars
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"Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the nineties, Erika Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment--a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she's now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she's still got an irrepressible laugh,...
5. Ellen Ochoa
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"Meet award-winning engineer and veteran astronaut Ellen Ochoa--once just a girl from Los Angeles, California. The granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, Ellen would pursue a career in physics at a young age and go on to earn master's and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. In 1993, Ellen became the first Latina in space. As a retired astronaut, she became the first Hispanic and second female director of the Johnson...
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"From former White House aide to President Obama and Harvard graduate, Alejandra Campoverdi, comes a riveting and unflinching memoir on navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina, offering a broad examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer. To be a First and Only in America is a delicate balancing act of surviving where you come from while acting like you belong where you're going. Alejandra Campoverdi has been...
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"A moving picture book for older children and families that introduces a difficult topic, amplifying the voices and experiences of immigrant children detained at the border between Mexico and the US. The children's actual words (from publicly available court documents) are assembled to tell one heartbreaking story, in both English and Spanish (back to back). Each spread is illustrated in striking full-color by a different Latinx artist. A portion...
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3 stars
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"A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man in a culture of machismo, Gomez's High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: his uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at twelve years old to become a man. The story then moves through the queer spaces where he learned the joy of being gay and Latinx, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where...
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"What happens when the all-American high school student discovers he's undocumented? Rafa's parents didn't want him to grow up feeling different because, as his mom told him: "Dreams should not have borders." Rafa had no idea of his immigration status until he tried to get his driver's license during his junior year of high school. Suddenly, his perfectly curated and slightly racist (race-ish, if you will) American life came undone. While his parents...
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"In this unflinching and inspiring memoir, Jesus Leon tells an extraordinary story of resilience and survival, shining a light on a childhood spent devastated by sex trafficking, gang life, and substance abuse. Born to indigenous working-class Mexican immigrants in San Diego in the 1970s, Jesus Leon's childhood was violently ruptured. A dangerous and harrowing encounter at a local gift shop when he was eleven years old left Leon with a deadly secret....
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"From the New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, an utterly original memoir-in-essays that is as deeply moving as it is hilariously funny"--
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"For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Growing up in the Colombia of the 1980's and 1990's in a house where "what did you dream?" was asked in place of "how are you?" her world was laced with prophecy and violence. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with the ability to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. As a young girl, Rojas Contreras eavesdropped...
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Average Rating:
5 stars
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"The star of Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin ... presents her personal story in this middle-grade memoir about her parents' deportation and the ... struggles of undocumented immigrants and their American children"--
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Average Rating:
5 stars
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"When she was 11 years old Julissa Arce left Mexico and came to the United States on a tourist visa to be reunited with her parents, who dreamed the journey would secure her a better life. When her visa expired at the age of 15, she became an undocumented immigrant. Thus began her underground existence, a decades long game of cat and mouse, tremendous family sacrifice, and fear of exposure. After the Texas Dream Act made a college degree possible,...
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Average Rating:
5 stars
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A memoir "for young readers about a Latina rocket scientist whose early life was transformed by joining the Girl Scouts and who currently serves as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA"--
16. Roberto Clemente
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"Meet Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente-once just a kid from Carolina, Puerto Rico, who loved to play baseball on the streets of his hometown with friends and family. As a right fielder, Roberto played eighteen seasons with Major League Baseball, but his life was tragically cut short when a plane he chartered to bring earthquake relief supplies to Nicaragua crashed. The first Latin American player to be inducted into the National...
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In picture-book format, examines the life and career of Selena Quintanilla, the singer whose success in Tejano music and crossover into mainstream American music opened the door for other Latinx entertainers.
18. Sonia Sotomayor
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"Meet Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor-once just a girl growing up in the Bronx, New York, with her brother and Puerto Rican-born parents. When Sonia was young, her mother emphasized the value of education, and Sonia would eventually graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University, receive a juris doctor from Yale Law School, and later serve as an assistant district attorney for New York County. Throughout her decades-long career, Sonia's...